Are our women safe? Is there any woman in Sierra Leone that can confidently say because of her position in life, her education or job that she won’t be a victim of gender based violence (GBV)? The answer to both is a resounding no.
Despite massive awareness raising campaigns and millions of dollars spent in the fight against GBV including on medical treatment, loss of work time, etc., it would seem as if Sierra Leonean men are bent on continuing the embarrassing act of violence against our womenfolk.
Case in point: three separate incidents of acts of violence against three women at various stages of their lives on the social and financial ladder last week, have made it clear to Sierra Leone that more must be done to put the final nail in the GBV coffin, making sure that such actions against our womenfolk are once and for all brought to a resounding halt.
It started off with a powerfully built Nigerian national mercilessly assaulting a tiny Sierra Leonean young lady on Lumley Street. Lying in a pool of water after he’d twice bashed her head in with a rock (for which she could have suffered severe head injuries), this young lady’s shoulder was so dislocated resulting from her assault that moving her was a serious problem.
But because she wasn’t in a desired field of work or level of society, as she is rumoured to be a lady of the night, she was assaulted by this alleged Nigerian drug dealer fronting as a store owner on Lumley Street named Biggie. When this journalist tried to intervene, the gentlemen and his fellow countryman business partner called ‘their female officer’ from the Eastend Police who advised the young lady not to go to the police and make a case, but to instead go to the hospital and forget the incident.
Challenging that the procedure calls for her going to first report at the station for her to receive the police medical form and declaring that as a journalist it is his duty to report such happenings, this journalist was assaulted by one of Biggie’s partners, another alleged drug dealer named Shekuba, who claimed that the LUC at Eastend Police Station is his friend and that he has repeatedly avoided trouble due to his connections.
But while these men at that level are not expected to know much based on their education and background, they represent a large portion of reported cases of violence against women. These are the men who in the main do not consider violence against women as a problem.
However, their action was followed by people who should know better. The first is of police officers filmed and published on social media sites giving a severe trashing to a protesting female Institute of Public Administration and Management – IPAM, University of Sierra Leone student.
A bit up the social ladder in Sierra Leone, this young lady that was hoping to be a part of the graduating class, hence about to enter her professional career, when she was assaulted by men who are expected to know the consequences of GBV, as they come across a large number of such cases in their line of work as police officers.
Being in the frontline of the fight against GBV, police officers whose salaries are paid for by our taxpayer money are not expected to assault anyone, especially women. Far from the level of a Biggie and Shekuba, these officers were expected to behave themselves professionally when dealing with womenfolk. Unfortunately, violence knows no bounds in Sierra Leone as these men showed the extent to which violence against women and girls have permeated every fabric of our society.
But the final straw to the string of attacks against our womenfolk last week saw three highly trained professional men, one of which, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health, happens to be the professional head of the ministry that deals with GBV; the first deputy to the Minister of Health; and the Chief Medical Officer of Connaught Hospital manhandling a female medical doctor for refusing to hand over a video she recorded of striking hospital workers.
What is disheartening about this event that led to junior doctors and other medical practitioners downing their tools in protest, is that it, more than the above incidents, have raised or exposed certain issues in Sierra Leone’s fight against GBV: the key people in the fight, the men of Sierra Leone/the public, law enforcement officers, and the health service providers, cannot be relied on to dissuade men from assaulting women using their vast training and sensitisations. They form part of the problem, and are hiding behind the respectability that comes with their job descriptions.
So what is the difference between the above cases and the many other reported cases of violence against women and girls that happen across Sierra Leone on a daily basis? The difference is that they happened to three women at three different levels of attainment in life, which qualified that a woman’s level of attainment in Sierra Leone does not exclude her from being assaulted by a man. It says that no female in Sierra Leone – no matter how high the social and professional ladder she climbs – is safe from abuse by men.
The first young lady that was assaulted was still in search of a job, while the second lady was hopeful of graduating from IPAM hence on her way into establishing herself in her chosen line of work, while the last was already established in her profession as a medical doctor no less.
Meanwhile, their collective assault is a verdict against male involvement in the fight against gender based violence, especially the last case, which saw a trio of highly educated men from the Ministry tasked with dealing with GBV assaulting a professional woman under their purview. Since GBV is a mental and health issue, their occurrences are handled by the Ministry of Health and Sanitation alongside the police. The assumption here is that it must take a mentally ill person to assault a woman, while her assault is a health issue.
For the longest time, violence towards women in Sierra Leone was seen as a cultural phenomenon, and justified as such. It presupposes that women are the weaker sex and subject to the will of men. Also there is the issue of culture that sees women as men’s property and subject to their discipline. This religious-cultural practice was at its peak during the warring years, when it was realised that the role GBV played during the war resulted to over a quarter of a million of our women and girls subjected to sexual and other acts of violence against their persons. It put Sierra Leone in the unenviable position of having three out of every five women having been so violated in their lifetime here.
This medium is calling on all men, including the First Gentleman of the nation, President Bio, to take the lead on this. As our the head of our nation, we expect you to take the lead in this matter as we can safely assume that those of the law and health professions we were expecting to do so form part of the problem. There cannot be sacred cows when it comes to violence against women.
Since these people are handpicked by you based on your very vast powers of appointment, you must assume the lead here and make a strictly deterrent move of not only firing the officers and health ministry officials as mentioned above but seeing that they face public scrutiny through the courts. Sir, would you feel comfortable having such men around the First Lady? Would you consider her safe to argue with such men? Now imagine our First Lady in the positions of the above women and being assaulted by these men. Now articulate such feelings in legal terms; and there lies part of the solution.
Also, First Lady Fatima Bio and other women of note in our public space should not let this rest, as it would fly in the face of every bit of advocacy aimed at bringing such occurrences to a halt (we cannot accept a negligible level, which is a defeatist mentality). Of all the advocacies by the First Lady aimed at protecting our women and girls, here is a chance to set a great deterrence example.
While the first young lady settled by allegedly accepting money (reportedly Le. 150,000 from Biggie’s compatriot named Keliche/KC), maybe she could be forgiven because of her level of attainment and current hardship; although her case can still be picked up by the state.
However, we don’t expect the IPAM student and lady doctor to drop such a case. Your continued silence and inaction will add to the problem faced by thousands of your sisters and daughters on a daily basis. You must see these cases through to their logical ends that the above men be made to own up to their collective actions.
The public is here called upon not to let such cases be swept under the rug. We have a duty as society to always speak and take action against gender based violence. For a very long time the focus in the fight considered the penetration or sexual aspect, while the physical assault aspect was treated with kid’s gloves in acknowledgement of our very violent way of settling disputes.
Professional men and women should know that there are moral and ethical expectations that you are supposed to uphold. No one under or above you at work is your child. It is not your job to assault anyone. Our womenfolk should feel especially safe around you because of the level of maturity and understanding your educational training is expected to add to you, even if you come from a culture where such actions are not viewed in the main as wrong and can be easily justified.
Our women are not our children. They are our equal partners in all areas of development: home, community, nation and world. There is nothing weak or weaker about women, and they are not subject to anyone save God. Even their religious or spiritual role in the home is one of an equal partner to men in the cause of God’s work. We cannot continue to so humiliate the mothers of our nation without expecting it to get worse with successive generations if it is not addressed.
Far from needing 16 days of activism to raise awareness on gender and sexual violence, we need a 365 day, all and everyday awareness campaign that actively deals with each case as it comes up.